Outage Analysis of IRS-Assisted Dual-Hop Mixed RF-UWOC Network

In this work, we derive the outage analysis of an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted dual-hop mixed radio frequency (RF)-underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) network. For diverse underwater operations such as surveillance, excursions, and climate monitoring, UWOC is a promising solution for transferring high-speed information. IRS is a revolutionary low-cost technique to improve the received signal strength and system performance. The use of IRS is advantageous in improving wireless communication over long distances by providing a line-of-sight path and making it reliable. We investigate a communication scenario where a source located underwater transmits signals to the relay using an underwater wireless optical link, which, assisted by the IRS, provides an alternate path to the receiver through an RF link. We consider generalized κ-µ fading for the relay-IRS and IRS-receiver RF communication links, mixed intensity-modulation direct detection (IM-DD) with exponential generalized Gamma distribution for the source-relay UWOC link.